Have you had your photos scanned with ScanMyPhotos.com? Now is the perfect time to go through your scans for those special photos that need a little TLC. Upload your digital file for restoration, no need to send in the photos.

Monthly Archives: January 2017

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The “war” on photo scanning became a battle of words. Since pioneering innovations in the photo imaging industry — beginning way back in 1990 — ScanMyPhotos.com has become known as a top photo imaging industry leader by demystifying photography.

The History of Photo Scanning

Recently, some photo-scanning apps have entered the world of digitizing analog snapshots. And, with 3.5 trillion analog photos, plus 35mm slides, Polaroids, and those old film negatives, the ocean of opportunity to help digitize the world’s photos is deep.

We helped solve the biggest challenge in photography; how to upload all your nostalgic snapshots to the popular photo-sharing apps. Think of it, most pictures shared on Instagram, Facebook and Google Photos are recent digital pictures from your smartphone–if you’re like us, mostly of the food you ate last evening. Right?

ScanMyPhotos.com CEO with his Dad at Disneyland in 1967

Our Passion is Photography.

It always has been. For some emotional background, company CEO, Mitch Goldstone was with his Dad hugging him at Disneyland in 1967. This photo became his only tangible memory, as his father passed away two years later. At that young age, he understand better than most, how powerful a single photo is. We all have that similar, special picture. Right?

But, What are Others Saying About Why THEY are Digitizing Pictures?

Follow the conversation as our team of professional copywriters engage and interview people who shared these heartwarming tales:

We’ve heard it all. Companies taking more than two months to scan some orders with only a few dozen pictures, others are using container ships to send your family pictures abroad. Really? And many charging 40-75 cents and more to scan a single picture. How about paying about 8-cents and getting free 3-way delivery to have ScanMyPhotos.com professionally digitize everything at it’s Irvine, CA corporate headquarters and fulfillment facility?

USA Today just reported on the “Top 3 New Year’s Tech Resolutions You Must Keep,” and included ScanMyPhotos.

For affordable bulk scans, ScanMyPhotos.com is an old standby (you can read David Pogue’s review on nytimes.com). The company will scan about 1,800 photos at 300 dpi for $145 at its headquarters in Irvine, Calif.; the cost of sending the photo box to you, as well as the shipping of the box to ScanMyPhotos and back to you again is included in the price. That’s one of the least costly and most uncomplicated deals around.

And, as for the “fastest” way to digitize pictures, a new, DIY scanner will set you back $650 before digitizing even your first photo–at slow-mo rates compared to us. They added a fine print disclaimer. And, it appears they even updated the misstatement from “fastest” to “high-speed.” But, the official corporate press release headline still has what looks like a walloping, misleading lie: “Epson Debuts World’s Fastest Photo Scanner….” We can only guess they are also raging from PC Magazine’s prominent reviewer and senior analyst, Tony Hoffman, who adding this at the end of his review:

Another option would be to send your prints to a photo scanning service, which may be a more economical choice if you have no more than a few thousand prints to scan. For example, you can order a box from ScanMyPhotos International that fits about 1,800 prints; fill it and send it in, and the company will scan your photos to JPEGs at 300dpi for $145 or at 600dpi for $259 (including shipping) and then return them to you with a DVD containing the scanned files.

Epilogue

This Weather Channel story explains why pictures must be digitized [spoiler alert: it’s emotional]. It’s all about helping to digitize the world’s photo memories. Many choices, but for the ultimate “mic drop” moment…ready for it? This is the only way to professionally digitize about 300,000 high resolution pictures every day:

One of the most common photo restoration requests received at ScanMyPhotos.com is how to fix one form or another of water damage. Whether it’s humidity or more severe contact with water, water damage brings us a lot of photo restoration business. We’d prefer to keep your family photos intact in the first place.

Whether your house was flooded or caught fire, your prized nostalgic family photos have probably suffered from water damage.

Don’t let the photos dry out! As your photographs dry, they will stick to each other and any other materials they may be in contact with. You’ll find it impossible to pull them apart without causing potentially irreparable damage.

Get to work as soon as possible. Your photographs shouldn’t stay wet for more than two or three days. Now is a good time to recommend having a friend (or photo restoration expert) scan the images before you try pulling anything apart or before doing anything that will further damage the photos.

While you’re working on your photos, store them in a container full of cold, clean tap water; the colder the better. Don’t add chlorine to the water, but change the water every day. The chlorine in tap water is enough to prevent the growth of fungi and other biological threats.

Rinse your photos in a container of cold, clear running water. Don’t run the water directly onto the photos, because that could damage the chemical emulsion, causing permanent damage. Keep rinsing them until the run-off water is clear.

Carefully remove your photographs or negatives from the water, taking the smallest quantity possible. Pull them out of their wrappers and gently separate them. DO NOT FORCE THEM APART. Separate as many as possible before returning them to the cold water and starting on another batch. Repeat the separate-soak cycle as many times as necessary. However, sometimes you may not be able to separate materials without forcing the issue. In those cases you will probably have to just accept the corresponding damage.

Once your materials are separated, store them in water until you can wash them individually, using cold, clean running water. Use cotton balls, a soft cotton cloth or a soft foam rubber brush to remove foreign objects if needed. Rinse your photographs or negatives one more time after cleaning is complete.

Hang-dry prints and negatives from a clothesline. Make sure they will not be exposed to dust. As an option, special solutions are available that facilitate uniform, spot-free drying when applied to negatives and slides.

If your prints curl while drying, wet the paper side (NOT the emulsion!) with a moist sponge and place each one between two pieces of acid-free paper or photo blotters, and leave them under a flat, heavy object for a day or two.

Even if you follow these instructions, some of your prints will probably suffer permanent damage. In that case, still send it to us to find out which photos can be restored. You’ll be surprised!

Have you been tasked with preserving the family photos? Do you have boxes of photos in the attic that need to be digitized? Are trying to downsize on clutter in the New Year? If so, we see a photo scanning project in your near future.

But don’t worry, with proper planning and prep work, this project can be a breeze to accomplish—and fun, too!

In order to help you tackle your photo scanning project as efficiently as possible, here are four things you should know before jumping in.

The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern said: If you’re not a do-it-yourselfer, you can always box up your memories and send them out to a photo-scanning service. This option can be efficient and even fairly inexpensive, but you have to be OK with handing over your most cherished memories to complete strangers for a few days.

I gave it a shot. I organized a group of 100 shots by year, labeled them with Post-its and sent them off via FedEx to ScanMyPhotos.com, based in Irvine, Calif. Within a few days, my prints had been uploaded and the originals were back safely in my possession. A nice woman named Shannon kept me updated on the process throughout the week.

Do you go with the lowest price?

Do you go with the fastest return?

Do you go with the company that ships your photos in container ships overseas to produce those low cost scans with non-U.S. labor, or

Do you stick with a company that keeps the work in-house?

Do you try those DIY phone scanning apps?

In your research for professional scanning companies, you may have seen debates about the use of flatbed scanners versus high-speed professional scanners. We want to set the record straight about high-speed bulk photo scanning.

In the beginning, the differences were more pronounced between the two scanning options. Originally, high-speed photo scanning could only produce 300 dpi images at the highest setting and the scanners were optimized for scanning documents. By way of comparison, flatbed scanners could produce 1200+ dpi images, but the truth is, 1200+ dpi images is a huge waste of space unless your photo is either A) really, really small or B) you plan on printing that photo on a massive canvas. The photo scanning industry seems to have settled on 600 dpi as the ideal resolution for scanning photos.

F
Now, high-speed scanner manufacturers have “seen the light” with the potential for photo scanning with their equipment and have vastly improved scanning resolutions and the quality of scanning for items other than documents. Due to this epiphany, lead by ScanMyPhotos.com, which pioneered this entire industry–bulk scanners caught up to flatbed scanners and now all high-end, high-speed scanners can easily produce clear, crisp 600 dpi resolution scans. Think you could tell the difference between a flatbed scan and a high-speed scan? Take a look at the images below. Both were scanned at 600 dpi. One was scanned using our ~$80,000 high-speed scanners, and one was scanned on a $3,800 flatbed scanner (Epson(R) Expression 10000XL), both completely unaltered from the initial scan.

The KRON4 TV news story explains why digitizing your pictures is trending and a vital family project to undertake.

Forbes contributor, Tony Bradley, published an in-depth article about how to access your “digital legacy” so future generations can keep your memories and archived pictures alive.

This is a trending topic, as TIM HERRERA, in The New York Times, shares more insights on the urgency to have a plan and preserve your entire digital profile after death. From Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google, what happens to your archives after you die? Read more.

Excerpt:

“There will always be software and tools for accessing and converting files which over time may become obsolete,” says Mitch Goldstone, president and CEO of ScanMyPhotos. “This is a big part of ScanMyPhotos.com‘s service, as a digital legacy provider. The worst thing is to not digitize pictures now as they will fade due to the ravages of time. Or get mistakenly discarded. We always urge people to have many backups in off site locations for all their pictures.”

A recent press release from ScanMyPhotos.com explains that the average household has about 5,500 analog snapshots. That means generations of photos are quickly fading away from the ravages of time. People post billions of new images from mobile devices every day, but the powerful social media storytelling platforms are mostly devoid of the history of treasured nostalgic memories.